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No cannon for you: Caps beat Blue Jackets 4-0

By Chris Cerullo

 5 Comments

December 8, 2018 9:40 pm

The Washington Capitals entered Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio to faceoff against the Blue Jackets in their barn for the first time since that Caps series clinching win in round one of the playoffs last season. That seems like forever ago, it’s a new day (yes it is) in Columbus, lets see how the boys would fair in this one.

The good guys jumped out to a huge lead, getting goals from Brett Connolly, Dmitrij Jaskin, and Alex Ovechkin all unanswered by Columbus, meaning they took a 3-0 lead into our first break of the night. I got nothing for you from the second.

Travis Boyd’s first NHL goal made it 4-0!

Caps beat Blue Jackets 4-0!

  • Outside of maybe a thirty second spell of Columbus pressure, that first period was one of the best frames the Caps have played all season. I think they could have arguably been up five or six goals to nothing if Sergei Bobrovsky wasn’t ready from the jump.
  • Brett Connolly opened up scoring less than two minutes into Saturday night’s proceedings. Connolly now has points in four straight games and the two assists on his goal came from two other hot, hot, hot hands in Jakub Vrana and Evgeny Kuznetsov. Kuzy now has at least one point in every game since returning from injury and his five game assist streak is the longest streak of that sort this season by any Caps player.
  • Dmitrij Jaskin can finally breathe a sigh of relief as he has gotten his first goal as a Capital and his first goal of this season out of the way. It wasn’t pretty as Travis Boyd basically blindly banked it off of Jaskin, but hey they all count the same.

  • Someone who is not unfamiliar with scoring this year is Alex Ovechkin who got on the board for his currently league leading 22nd goal of the season. Brayden Point and Patrik Laine were level with him at 21 and Point somehow did not put one home for the Lightning in a game where they scored eleven thousand times. Ovi will be your sole NHL goal leader in the morning.
  • The second was definitely a less good period for the boys clad in white, but I still think they were the better overall side at even strength. Chased from the net was Bobrovsky to start the frame so Joonas Korpisalo became the Caps new target of the night. Braden Holtby was locked in for a late dangerous Columbus power play to keep the Caps three goal lead intact heading into the third.
  • The Capitals best defenseman this season, Michal Kempny got mugged by Pierre-Luc Dubois for seemingly ages directly in front of an official and it took till about the 6th whack for him to finally earn a call. Score that one for the man with the better thighs, but yeesh throw that arm up a little sooner, stripes.
  • Brad Marchand totally would have been an intolerable child on the Hawks in the first Mighty Ducks movie.

  • The Caps power play is 1 for their last 13 and 3 for their last 24. That needs to pick up.
  • While he wasn’t being trolled by his captain, Jonas Siegenthaler was solid yet again. I don’t think he’s ever once really looked out of place in the NHL. Bright future for him.

  • The third period was sorta tilted in the Blue Jackets’ favor but they could still not dent the twine behind Braden Holtby as he recorded his second shutout of the season.
  • Big congrats to Travis Boyd who recorded his first career NHL goal! The goal was assisted by none other than Alex Ovechkin. May there be many more in your future, Travis.

The Caps controlled the high scoring areas the entire game and in doing so won the battle to keep themselves perched atop the NHL’s Metropolitan Division. Next up for the Caps is a return to Capital One Center on Tuesday night to greet Mike Green’s Detroit Red Wings.

Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Blue Jackets

Headline photo: Jamie Sabau

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